NEW MORNING STAR: Venus is passing by the sun today and undergoing a transformation--from Evening Star to Morning Star. For the next eight months, the brightest of all planets will shine in the pre-dawn sky, changing phases, casting shadows, and occasionally posing with the crescent Moon for a lovely photo-op. A new animation from graphic artist Larry Koehn shows what to expect when you wake up in the morning: play it.

AIR TRAFFIC JAM: "Last night there was a a lot of traffic over my private observatory," reports Tamas Ladanyi of Veszprem, Hungary. "In a span of only a few minutes, I photographed space shuttle Discovery, the International Space Station, and an airplane passing by."

Scenes like this are being reported by sky watchers around the world. Discovery and the ISS are circling Earth in tandem, drawing attention to themselves as they glide brightly across the night sky. Check the Simple Satellite Tracker to see if you are favored with a "double flyby" before Discovery lands on March 28th--airplanes not included.

CRESCENT MOON ALERT: Tonight, when the sun goes down, step outside and look west. You might see something like this:

Ugur Ikizler took the picture just hours ago from Mudanya, Turkey. "Tonight's crescent moon hanging low on the western horizon was a lovely sight," he says. "I photographed it using a Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT."

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.